I created a Web Query in Excel to pull the writers' fields - username, email, etc. from the site, and wrote a template message in Word. I also setup my GMail account as a POP account in my Microsoft Outlook. The merge works fine, except that it saves every message in the Outbox. I need to open each and select Gmail as the account to use to send the email because I cannot figure out any way of selecting the From account within the Mail Merge process. It looks like it uses the default email address within Outlook, in this case, my corporate address.

I think I will set the default to GMail whenever I need to do such mass mailings, and save myself some effort:)